Jake Sanders
Content Strategist
The Holy Grail of Marketing
Published:
September 22, 2026
Updated:
September 29, 2026
Table of Contents
Greg Licciardi has spent his entire career in marketing and advertising — from ad agencies in SoHo to media companies like American Express Travel and Leisure and Univision, to his current role as Vice President of Partner Programs and Sponsorships at the ANA, the Association of National Advertisers. He teaches Integrated Marketing Communications at Fordham and Seton Hall. And about three years ago, sitting on a Zoom call, waiting for a Wendy's order to arrive, he had what he describes as a marketing epiphany.
On this episode of What Gets Measured, Greg talks through the framework that epiphany produced — the five Rs of the Holy Grail of Marketing — and what it takes to actually execute it in an industry that keeps throwing more tools, more pressure, and more complexity at the people trying to do the work.
The Five Rs — Origin and Logic of the Framework
The Holy Grail of Marketing did not begin with a whiteboard session or a consulting engagement. It began with Wendy's.
"I started receiving Wendy's ads in my social feed on Fridays at eleven AM," Greg explains. "And I said to myself, 'This is the Holy Grail of marketing. It's the five Rs. It's a framework.'"
Wendy's was reaching the Right Person — Greg, a known customer. They were sending the Right Message — offers, not brand awareness. Getting the ads well-before lunch meant the Right Time was locked. The Right Environment was Greg's social feed, where he was already engaged. And the Right Outcome followed: he went back to Wendy's instead of another burger joint.
The framework is straightforward, but the execution is anything but. Greg is direct about what happens when marketers treat the five Rs as a checklist rather than an interdependent system.
"If you miss one of the Rs, everything you've invested in — you can hire a hotshot agency, you can hire a high-tech AI agency — but if you don't look at your outputs and where they're showing up and how they're showing up, all that investment will go out the window."
The five Rs are not five separate problems to solve in sequence. Each one conditions the others. A perfectly targeted message in the wrong environment fails. The right timing with the wrong message fails. The framework holds together or it doesn't hold at all.
AI Handles the What, Humans Own the Why
Greg wrote “Holy Grail of Marketing” with a subtitle — How to Achieve Optimal Marketing Success Using AI and Beyond — and the word "beyond" carries most of the weight.
"AI does a lot with the where, who, and what," he says. "But the why is missing. That's what us human beings, us expert marketers, that's what we have to really solve for and really help our brands dig into."
The distinction matters practically. AI generates data at a volume and speed that wasn't available to marketers a decade ago. The data is rich, Greg acknowledges — richer than it's ever been. But the data-driven marketing question it cannot answer is why a consumer would want to purchase a brand, use a brand, or trust a brand. That question requires human judgment.
"It takes the human being to take that forward and curate the output," he says. "Don't settle for generic output because it was simple and easy and saved you time."
The risk Greg names is not that AI produces bad work. The risk is that AI produces convincing work — output that looks complete but is missing the motivational layer that makes marketing actually land. Any AI agents for marketing are only as good as the data layer they sit upon. The data is only as good as the insight applied to it. And the insight requires someone willing to ask why in the first place.
Harry's Razors — The Right Person, Found the Hard Way
To illustrate what it looks like to build from the why outward, Greg turns to Harry's Razors — and to a firsthand account he gathered from John Gillis, one of the company's early hires.
Harry's launched as a direct-to-consumer challenger to Gillette, a multi-billion dollar brand owned by Procter & Gamble. Two founders, a shoestring budget, and a very specific answer to the why question.
"They saw the white space in the marketplace, that unfulfilled consumer need — the why," Greg explains. "They crystallized it down to an affordable razor that could be sent to a young dad's home. That was it."
The clarity of that insight shaped everything. The product design, the price point, the delivery model, the brand voice — all of it followed from one well-defined consumer truth. And then came the execution, which Greg describes as relentlessly iterative.
"It was an iterative process. They constantly tested. They were doing it as they were in the air flying — they had to, because they had a shoestring budget. So every dollar they spent, they tracked ROI, they tracked performance, they measured success."
The right message found its audience. And then that audience carried the message further. "The early customers became disciples," Greg says, "to preach the good word of Harry's." The targeting strategy, in other words, eventually became self-sustaining — because the why was strong enough to travel person to person.
The lesson Greg draws is not that small budgets force creativity, though they often do. The lesson is that a clearly defined why generates a force multiplier that no ad spend can manufacture.
Context, Environment, and the Brand That Shows Up Everywhere
The right environment is the R that Greg says gets the least attention and causes the most damage when it's ignored.
"One size doesn't fit all," he says. "You really have to look at your brand message, your brand ethos — what is it that's so special about your brand that you live and breathe for every employee."
The failure mode he describes is familiar to anyone who has run a programmatic buy: a brand with a clear ethos, a strong message, and a defined audience launches into a broad programmatic buy that isn't monitored. The ads surface on unsafe sites, fake news sites, detrimental sites.
"That's where you lose the right environment," Greg says. "Sometimes the medium becomes the message that you show up in."
Brand safety is the floor, but the ceiling is something higher — what Greg, drawing on contributor Paulina Brown, former president of LVMH North America, calls aesthetic intelligence. The principle is that brand essence is not a positioning document. It is a lived practice across every touchpoint a consumer encounters.
The failure version: a luxury watch brand that executes a beautiful advertising campaign and then staffs its retail floor with salespeople who "can't tell me what a tourbillon is." The consumer who walked in converted by a great ad walks out confused about why they bothered.
The success version: J.Crew.
"You go into a J.Crew store, it's like you're in a bar," Greg says. "They're happy. They're smiling at you, they're throwing pants at you, colors I've never seen before. It's a great experience. I always walk out of there spending more money than I should have."
The difference between the two is not budget or brand size. It is whether the brand's aesthetic intelligence — its attunement, its articulation, its ability to curate an experience — is embedded into the operation or left as an aspiration in a brand guidelines PDF.
"It's gotta be consistently embedded into every part of the brand," Greg says. "Owned and operated sites, retail stores, newsletters — whatever it is."
The Courage to Market Holistically
Greg closes the conversation with something closer to a challenge than a summary.
"It takes courage," he says. "Have the courage to go out and learn about the consumer you're targeting and to deliver a campaign that's truly unique to your brand purpose."
The pressure running against that courage is real. Marketing has gotten faster, more complex, and more bottom-funnel in its orientation. The next board meeting, the next quarterly number, the next reporting cycle — all of it creates an incentive to reach the most consumers at once with the simplest possible message, track the conversion, and call it done.
Greg's argument is that the framework exists precisely to resist that pull. The five Rs are not a productivity tool. They are a North Star — a set of principles that remain valid no matter how fast the tools change, how much automation enters the workflow, or how much AI reshapes what's possible.
"Really slow down a little," he says, "because marketing is an incredible field. Some of the smartest, most creative people are in this field because of their ability to be creative, lay off the gas, and really take data and make it into marketing that stands out — that delivers on that why and fulfills that white space in the marketplace."
The data is only as good as the insight. The insight is only as good as the question. And the question that drives the whole system is the one that still requires a human being willing to ask it: why would someone choose this brand?
Cracking that code is the key to unlocking the map to the holy grail of marketing. For marketers ready to grab the grail, connect with Greg online and pick up his new book at the link below.
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Connect with Greg: LinkedIn | Website
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Transcript
# Untitled
**Greg Licciardi:** [00:00:00]
**Jake:** Okay, here we go. Greg Licciardi, welcome to What Gets Measured. How are you, sir?
**Greg Licciardi:** I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on the show. This is such an
**Jake:** it's kismet. You know?
**Greg Licciardi:** It's-
**Jake:** w- we met trying to get together an ANA event, um, and then I learned about your book, and I'm just amazed. And so I'm, I'm thrilled that I... You're a busy man, so I'm glad that you found yourself. Where do we find you now, Greg?
**Greg Licciardi:** I'm in New York City. I'm actually at an event at, uh, 30 Rock in Midtown, uh, so it's pretty cool
**Jake:** And just grabbing some time when you can. Well, thank you for sharing. Um, let's get right into this book. Um, well, hold on. Let's talk about your career, because you have a lot of experience that went into the book, and I just want people to kinda get a, a brief sense of your bio and your career in marketing.
**Jake:** So just give us, like, that small little [00:01:00] story
**Greg Licciardi:** Sure, sure. So I've been in marketing and advertising my whole career. Uh, I started at an ad agency in SoHo, worked on some luxury accounts, um, some CPG, um, just loved advertising. And, um, so I moved on to, uh, some big media companies. Uh, I worked at American Express Travel and Leisure, Univision, Univision.
**Greg Licciardi:** I sold, uh, and worked in partnerships for, uh, Hispanic and multicultural. and then I worked at, um, Worth Media Group and to my current role at the ANA, uh, the Association of National Advertisers, which is the longest standing, largest, and most credible advertising association. And it's, just amazing to be here because I'm always around marketers. We're doing events on all different topics, you know, [00:02:00] creators, AI, content. Um, so it's like a kid in a candy shop for me. so about eight years a- no, now it's been 11 years ago, I started teaching at night. I, I decided I need to, I need to teach others about what I'm learning. So I became a, an adjunct professor.
**Greg Licciardi:** I teach at Fordham and Seton Hall. I t- I'm teaching a course this semester called Integrated Marketing Communications, which is what they pretty much call marketing today. um, so it's, it's great. I have all kinds of great guest speakers and, um, about two and a half years ago, uh, almost three years ago now, I started writing my first book, Holy Grail of Marketing, um, is used i- in the classroom across the country by several, uh, marketing professors.
**Greg Licciardi:** It's really taken off with startups and, brand managers. Uh, so it's, it's really... I'm having a lot of fun with [00:03:00] it.
**Jake:** And it's a, it's a wonderful book. I, I managed to get it on Kindle. Um, and I'm gonna get a physical copy soon. It is amazing
**Greg Licciardi:** the mail. I mailed you a copy. should be coming today they said, so hopefully when we're done discussing, um, our session, you'll have
**Jake:** Yeah.
**Greg Licciardi:** fresh right on your doorstep
**Jake:** Well, I've, I, I loved going through it. And, um, you also missed a Yellow Pages stint. Um,
**Greg Licciardi:** yeah.
**Jake:** I, I, I just was like the Univision, the Yellow Pages, the teaching, it all comes into, it all comes, yeah, it all comes into The Holy Grail, and I... That's a very, very, uh, strong title. It- give us, like, the elevator pitch for The Holy Grail, and then we'll break into it
**Greg Licciardi:** Sure. Holy Grail Marketing came about, um, coming out of the pandemic. I got hooked on fast food. I love Wendy's, their chicken [00:04:00] sandwiches, and their fries. So I would order, go pick it up, get on a Zoom call, order through GrubHub, and I noticed on Fridays at eleven AM, I started receiving Wendy's ads in my social feed. And I said to myself, "This is the Holy Grail of marketing. It's the five Rs. It's a framework." Wendy's was reaching the right person. They knew I'd been in there. The right message, they're sending me offers. The timing was impeccable, uh, right before lunch, in the right environment where I'm highly engaged in my social feeds, they're gaining the right outcome because I'm not going to Burger King or McDonald's I'm going back to Wendy's. So it was an epiphany I had, and so I started researching companies doing it well and not doing it well. I came across a company called The Weather Company. And The Weather Company, at the time, was owned by IBM. They provide [00:05:00] weather data to brands to help them reach the right person at the right time related to weather with empathy. So I was like, "Wow, this is a company that can really give me a great case study." So I reached out to their CMO, they gave me three case studies. And today, what optimizes the Holy Grail of marketing is being innovative, using new types of methods to get data on your audience and how to reach them. And so they gave me Elf Skincare, okay, th- which is one of their clients.
**Greg Licciardi:** Elf... Uh, do you know Elf?
**Jake:** yeah, yeah, I'm aware of it
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah. They're, they're like the fastest growing beauty brand right now. They've had three years of thirty percent consecutive year, year-over-year growth. Patrick O'Keeffe, who's their CMO, he spoke at one of our events. He's a rock star. great. so Elf, they found a statistic that says that eighty percent, [00:06:00] eight in ten women, base their beauty routine around the weather, right? So they leaned into it. They're like, "How can we not?" Right? they had this new Aqua Glow, um, primer that they were launching, and they did a campaign, this Aqua Glow weather report that ran across all the Weather Channel owned and-- owned properties, weather.com, um, it was a huge success. They had Meghan Trainor, I believe, in the ad and, um, she, she was great. But the data that they got, you know, and they used time, the timing was around inflection point of different weather, uh, patterns and, it just all worked together and they, they had, uh, about Really great sales growth, over 30% year-over-year sales growth. The intent to buy went up over 17%, so it was really good results. Um, so [00:07:00] that's how I, that's how I started writing the book is really, like, getting in-inspired by brands that were doing it well and not doing it well and really reporting on it the book. I wanted the book to be a non-traditional textbook. I wanted it to really focus on modern-day marketing and to also cover the latest trends.
**Greg Licciardi:** So the tagline of the book is How to Optimize for Marketing Success Using AI and Beyond, you do so well in your role at NinjaCat. I mean, NinjaCat's a leader, uh, i-in providing application resources for brands to help them achieve their, their marketing goals using, you know, your consultation and different products that you offer around AI, which is, which is really great
**Jake:** And it's, it's center- centered around that data. And so this next question, um, to get to the R-P-R-M-R-T-R-E-R-O, which I'm [00:08:00] calling repemrtreo, and I'm gonna patent that, because that's the fu-
**Greg Licciardi:** me at R.E.M.,
**Jake:** Oh,
**Greg Licciardi:** like. They're a good band.
**Jake:** listening to... That's me in the spotlight. Hold on. No, no, no. I... So,
**Greg Licciardi:** come back. I'm
**Jake:** oh, no, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for tangents. Um, but no, right, right message, right time, all that stuff.
**Jake:** It's relying on data heavy, and you just mentioned NinjaCat, big in data, but you have a quote in the book which I was highlighted. It said, "The data is only good as the insight." And I thought that was like, not... It sounds pedestrian, but you're like, no, that's huge. Data provides a lot of what and where and who, but the why is missing.
**Jake:** So talk about the importance of becoming why curious, and how some of the people, um, the brands in your book handled it. I mean, e.l.f. is a great example, you know, using weather, but wh- wh- what's your advice to [00:09:00] marketers on getting more concerned about why? Because we have all the what, the where, and the who.
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah. Yeah, that's so, that's so important. AI does a lot with the where, who, what, but the why is missing. That's what us human beings, us expert marketers, that's what we have to really solve for and really help our brands, is communicate that why. Why would a consumer want to purchase your brand, use your brand, have you consult with them? that's so important. And today, AI shoots out all kinds of data, and that, and that data is rich, and it's like never before, and what you guys help clients with is so powerful, but it can't stop there. It takes the human being to take that forward and curate the output. So for example, one of my case studies, um, I met one of the early hires at Harry's [00:10:00] Razors.
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah, I don't know if you, you use
**Jake:** Shaving. Shaving with them
**Greg Licciardi:** shaving. Direct to consumer. Now they're all over, they're in retail, but when they launched, went up against the Goliath, uh,
**Jake:** But Gillette, yeah
**Greg Licciardi:** owned by Procter & Gamble, multi-billion dollar company. Two guys, they saw the white space in the marketplace, that unfulfilled consumer need, the why, right?
**Greg Licciardi:** And that was... They crystallized it down to an affordable, razor that could be sent to a young dad's home That was it. So they took that and they said, "We're gonna slay the dragon. No one else is doing this. We're gonna design the coolest razor, the coolest looking razor. gonna be affordable, and when they want it, they can get it the next day.
**Greg Licciardi:** We can send it right to their home." And so they did a brilliant job. They used all different aspects of the [00:11:00] holy grail of marketing, of the five Rs. And they... I- John Gillis, who I met, one of the early hires, he told me it was an iterative process. They constantly tested. They were testing, they were doing it as they were in the air flying, they had to because they had a shoestring budget. So every dollar they spent, they tracked ROI, they tracked performance, they measured success. And slowly but surely, they started chipping away. The right message became their customers. It was the early customers that became disciples, to preach the good word, word of Harry's and what they offer to consumers and, um, that why that you asked me about, and it was so powerful. also used gamification. I mean, they were like modern day in gamification incentives, and they just cons- continue to chop away and gain market share, market share and, and they just had an [00:12:00] incredible run. Now they're everywhere,
**Jake:** Yeah
**Greg Licciardi:** They're, they're doing so well. So I broke down, I broke down their success story.
**Greg Licciardi:** I was very fortunate to meet one of the early hires who gave me a lot of time. It took a long time to get it approved, uh, up the chain, but it was, it's... I think you'll really like that case study when you see it. I think it speaks really well to the why
**Jake:** A- and, and I think the why is, is, is handled there. But one, one of the q- one of the examples was Harry's jumped into Movember, which was a, a, a f- a famous place where people are growing their hair, and they hit the day after. And so it was like, hey, uh, but knowing that there was participation already with young dads who might want something sent to their house, they're probably going into these worlds or participating in these things for these reasons.
**Jake:** And so, uh, again, context. You have another quote in the book that I highlighted. It says, "A [00:13:00] message only thrives when it fits the context in which it's received." And if, if people wanted to... Now, and you people aren't reading out here, but if you read that sentence, it makes perfect sense. But what Harry's is saying, "I'm gonna meet them in the contextual moment of their lives.
**Jake:** And I- my right message is gonna vibe because I'm not cramming it, I'm extracting it or extruding it from the place." And so this gets me to the right part of the grail, which I think is the slipperiest part. All of that data for the person, the message, the t- t- ta- all that is handled essentially with data, but context is important.
**Jake:** Do you think what holds people from grabbing the grail is an overfocus on targeting and surveillance to find right fits everywhere?
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah, one size doesn't fit all. You really have to, [00:14:00] you have to look at your brand message, your brand ethos. I talk about ethos in the
**Jake:** Hmm.
**Greg Licciardi:** and really, what is it that's so special about your brand that you live and breathe for every employee, right? It's, it's the mantra that everyone speaks to for your brand. Um, and y- y- you have a company that has a brand ethos, and then all of a sudden, their ads go into a programmatic buy that's pray and spray across thousands websites, and all of a sudden, these ads show up on unsafe sites, fake news sites, detrimental sites, it's not being monitored. It's not being, uh, watched with a careful eye, and that's where you lose the right environment. on top of it, like you s- like you shared, the contextualization of how does your message into [00:15:00] that environment and relate to the need and lifestyle and interests of that consumer you're reaching? and, and the... Sometimes the medium becomes the message that you show up in, right? It really does.
**Jake:** Угу.
**Greg Licciardi:** things have to be looked at and watched and monitored because if you miss one of the Rs, everything you've invested in, you can hire a hotshot agency, you can hire a high-tech agency, AI agency like NinjaCat, but if you don't look at your outputs and where they're showing up and how they're showing up, uh, all that investment will go out the window.
**Jake:** Yeah.
**Greg Licciardi:** it's so, so important
**Jake:** It's so important. And, and I think there's a, there's a growing awareness of contextual, um, importance that I think technology, AI, is making it im- We're, we're now forced to, to look at this dragon that we were sort of, like, [00:16:00] kind of dancing around. But now the data's here, and it's showing you. I, I have some really great examples.
**Jake:** What I need is you to show up. What I need is your context, your why, and that's why I love... This is not a prescriptive book, but it actually adds nuance that is needed for the targeting conversation, for
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah
**Jake:** for, for I'm gonna find the right person. We're gonna make the right people. No. Hold on. One of the examples you have in your book is Sharpie, which I thought was kind of like, oh.
**Jake:** Sharpie focused on creativity and individuality in some of their campaigns. They, they, it, it felt like they were empowering rather than dictating a narrative, which I thought was like, oh. 'Cause I'm gonna keep cramming my right message into you until you get it right. I think there's something about there's a mismatch in marketers' brains.
**Jake:** If you hammer a message home, you can create the narrative, but
**Greg Licciardi:** right
**Jake:** have to follow it and find it. Is the best way to drink from [00:17:00] a full grail filling it yourself or waiting for it to be filled? My question is, the emptiness in the grail is what gives it potential. You have to leave space for the Holy Ghost of the consumer, and there's a difference in between dictating a narrative and divining one.
**Greg Licciardi:** Yes.
**Jake:** how did sh- how did Sharpie get there? How, um, uh, why aren't people doing this?
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah. Uh, it's, it's so important and I think that the reason why, I, I, I don't know whole answer to this, but
**Jake:** No? Great. Well then I'm hanging up
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah, no, I don't know, know the... I can't explain everything. But what I can share with you is as marketing has become more complex and fast-moving and more tools are available, right? A lot of interest has become bottom of funnel, to hit the next quarter's [00:18:00] revenue, getting to the most consumers at once,
**Jake:** Indeed.
**Greg Licciardi:** results, right? Like short-term sales results, right? So that, um, that could be, reported in the next board meeting or your next
**Jake:** Totally.
**Greg Licciardi:** your
**Jake:** But the risk, bring the risk way down, right? Yeah
**Greg Licciardi:** it, it brings to risk the hol- it's a holistic approach and, and if you can collaborate and really show up authentically and in a, in a genuine way that's, that's in line with your brand message and use partners. So like one of our partners is Disney. They do a lot with streaming to integrate, um, messaging for their advertisers into the programming upfront, so it shows up in a way that's not intrusive. You know? They... It doesn't hinder the viewing experience. Sometimes it actually adds to the viewing experience [00:19:00] because, um, you know, American Express and restaurants and where they're dining and they integrate that into the programming.
**Jake:** Yeah
**Greg Licciardi:** It, it's just seamless. It-- You don't even notice it. it's, it's, you know, it's there. So I think we're gonna see a lot more of that type of innovation that comes around in media, and I think we're gonna see a lot more personalization at scale. That is the holy grail as far as CRM, you know,
**Jake:** Oh, right. And a CRM for sure
**Greg Licciardi:** personalization at scale to cons- specific consumer segments. That eighty/twenty rule, right? Eighty percent of your profits come from twenty percent of your customers. You're gonna treat that twenty percent a little bit more with kid gloves and s- more special and hug them, love them, so you can upsell them and grow them.
**Jake:** Damn.
**Greg Licciardi:** and that comes from having messaging that's really in tune to that segment learning to do that in new ways. Not just [00:20:00] learning how can I generate an N- AI generated ad and look at a full conversation and output and embed my ad in that. Now, that's coming, right?
**Jake:** Right
**Greg Licciardi:** And but- Is that really gonna drive you long-term great results? don't think so. Uh, so it's, it's something that this framework is a guiding North Star for brands. It's evergreen. So no matter how fast, uh, things get moving, how much AI come, comes into marketing, how much automation happens, you have this guiding framework to guide you. And if you stick to these principles and make sure you're hitting on all five Rs, you're more assured to have success
**Jake:** It's, it's such a great book to read because I came in, I mean, I, I have a, I have a bone to pick with targeting and messaging and data because it's [00:21:00] hard to triangulate, period, across data sets. Data brokers, I don't know what y'all are giving me. Platform metrics, I don't know what y'all are giving me. All of the places where you're getting data, there's a chance that some of it's bad, some of it's good.
**Jake:** But I, I, I think there's something about God, where was I going? Oh, there's something about your book that adds nuance to the conversation, esp- specifically around data and targeting, because part of your right person section when you were talking about was finding the right people who don't have a sign on their forehead that says right person.
**Jake:** Like, I love that the data, if you're curious enough and you're contextually aware enough and you have why, um, in your engine, um, I think the point is, is you can find expansive addressable markets that get you more [00:22:00] right people. And so I, I think there's something that you could at first blush look at Craig's book and say, "Oh, right person, right time.
**Jake:** That's a data nightmare." No, it's a data opportunity, and if you could think it broadly, you could find, oh, there's not just one right person. There's, there's a, there's a potential right person cooking up here. There's a, there's a right person that was wrong, uh, two months ago. Turns out they're right again.
**Jake:** So again, you start seeing a way to expand targeting, not drilling further in, but expanding the target space. So it like, it kind of, it made me feel free
**Greg Licciardi:** yeah, and getting innovative with that. Like looking at what the weather company offered to e.l.f.,
**Jake:** Right. That seems very pedestrian. Like the weather
**Greg Licciardi:** data, you know. What you can do to reach an audience that you may not have first-party data [00:23:00] on
**Jake:** Mm.
**Greg Licciardi:** and do it in an way with empathy around their and their lifestyle.
**Greg Licciardi:** And then I think one of the stats I put in the book when I was researching that chapter, um, I found a statistics that, that people who own boats likely to have an, a dog, right?
**Jake:** that, yeah
**Greg Licciardi:** Boat owners have dogs, right? So how about targeting if you're a Purina dog chow, whatever,
**Jake:** It works both ways. It works both ways. You know, tell the dog people about your boat, tell the boat people about your dog. You know, but I love that it opens up a two-way conversation in your brain where you start seeing this isn't just execution, there's also an expansion that could happen with the visible playing field.
**Jake:** I, I just, I thought it was beautiful. One thing that I took away from your book, um, your, your examples are from big brands saying [00:24:00] big things with big budgets and big bandwidth. The advice is actually really good. Sometimes you hear Steve Jobs give a... Or Disney or Coke or something. I don't have Coke's money, I don't know.
**Jake:** One part in there, VMLH,
**Greg Licciardi:** Well,
**Jake:** probably getting that wrong. Pauline Brown, she had this part in there that was the components of aesthetic intelligence, and I was like, "Oh, this
**Greg Licciardi:** Oh,
**Jake:** is brilliant. I love this." But most, most business people, uh, most clients, most marketers, they think it's just BS, and it's out of reach.
**Jake:** Um, is part of accessing the grace of the grail behaving like you're worth it? I- is it true that only the penitent marketer will pass?
**Greg Licciardi:** I, I think it's a really important attribute. Paulina Brown was president of LVMH for the US. I met her... I in touch with her at an event, her about the book. She was [00:25:00] writing Aesthetic Intelligence, or just came... it just came out,
**Jake:** That's her term.
**Greg Licciardi:** Yeah.
**Jake:** Oh, I love it.
**Greg Licciardi:** so brilliant, so brilliant, and that all comes into the right message chapter because you have to communicate your brand authentically from its roots, its fabric, aesthetic intelligence. And, she had such amazing experience working at LVMH on some of the most luxurious brands in the world, the most successful luxurious brands in the world, what they did to, to have gotten to those thrones was all about aesthetic intelligence. You know, the real... It, it's really incredible. So I was so happy to have her as a contributor to my book, because the tagline my book is How to Achieve Optimal Marketing Success Using AI and Beyond.
**Greg Licciardi:** The beyond [00:26:00] is what Paulina talked about, Paulina Brown. It's the things that go beyond data, beyond, um, you know, uh, ways of delivering ads and the technology. It's, really focusing on your brand purpose and your brand essence
**Jake:** I mean, and, and I'm, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna cut you off, Greg, because the minute, the minute you tell me that attunement, interpretation, articulation, and curation are important to my brand, I'm gonna just kick you out. Fool, we need money. Like, what are you talking about? And, and
**Greg Licciardi:** you
**Jake:** what, what's... I just kinda wanna get to the sense of I, as a poet, as a lover of art, as a deep appreciator of aesthetics, my, I love this.
**Jake:** I, I like y- you develop a high awareness of your physical surroundings. That's attunement. Translating emotional reactions into clear concepts. That's interpretation. Mm, [00:27:00] seems pretty good. Communicating an aesthetic vision so your team and partners can execute it. That seems like leadership. Um, curation, organizing and editing various design inputs into seamless, powerful...
**Jake:** This all sounds like marketing. All sounds very familiar, but there's something that you will be dismissed if you keep... Or how about this? I think a lot of people are talking about brands, and how do we feel, and what do we... But no one is living that talk. There, there's, um, Ashley Goodall has a book called The Problem With Change, and he worked at Cisco.
**Jake:** I think he still works at Cisco. But he analyzed high-performing organizations, and what did they do? Was it that they had a strong mission? Was it that they had a strong leader? Turns out it was powerful teams of four to 10 people that would ride or die with, for each other, and they all had a clear sense of what was going on.
**Jake:** It wasn't that they had a manifesto in mind, but they had an ability that they would work [00:28:00] together as a team to elevate the organization. It wasn't that there was a charismatic leader. It wasn't that there was a Ten Commandments, uh, you know, stamped on a thing. It was the fact that the teams were allowed to live and have aesthetic intelligence within their core that creates great organizations.
**Jake:** But you wanna say, "It's about our story. It's about our origin." And yeah, but no one lives it or feels it. It's disconnected. What's your, what's your advice to people who maybe wanna get firmer on aesthetic intelligence and brand stuff, but it's, it's instead of just doing lip service, how do they make it real?
**Greg Licciardi:** They make it real by making it omnipresent in every touch point the consumer has with the brand. And Uh, customer experience is what makes or breaks a consumer journey. Okay? So, you know, a [00:29:00] beautiful watch brand launches, see the ads, they show up in great environments, they're showing up at the right time, right in the-- during the-- right before the holidays. You go into retail, and you find that the salesperson knows less about the watches than you know about the watches, right? Like, they're not trained. They're just there to take orders, and you're like, "I could have bought this on Amazon. Why am I in this store? And what's going on here? I, I, I was on the site.
**Greg Licciardi:** There was so much information. It was beautiful. You know, I learned so much, and now I'm in front of a salesperson who can't tell me what a tourbillon is." So I-- it's, it's, it's gotta be consistently embedded into every part of the brand, and that includes owned and operated sites, retail stores, newsletters, whatever it is. think J.Crew does it really well. You go into a J.Crew store, [00:30:00] it's like you're in a bar. They're happy. They're smiling at you. They're like, "Try this on."
**Jake:** Mm-hmm.
**Greg Licciardi:** throwing pants at you, colors I've never seen before. And, it's a great experience,
**Jake:** Right
**Greg Licciardi:** it's like I love it. I always walk out of there spending more money than I should have.
**Jake:** But experience attending to the experience, one thing that I not- that I wrote down about The Weather Company is they tied the data straight into the ad execution, and it wasn't treated as a background layer.
**Greg Licciardi:** No, right
**Jake:** Like, it, like I love, "Oh, we have an insight, 8 to 10. Okay, let's find a cheeky way not to mention weather.
**Jake:** Let's not mention where the data came from. We're so smart." I like that they were like, "Oh, no, you tell them exactly what this is for. This is for the weather." And I like that you, you use,
**Greg Licciardi:** the wea-
**Jake:** you use your data as, as, as like a rugby ball that you just go into the, the [00:31:00] crowd with. Um, and rather than saying, "Oh, I have my data.
**Jake:** It's safe in a computer. Okay, let's do some marketing." No. Grab your data and run into the crowd. Because y- y- I mean, does that may be something about, like, bringing data to life in a brief, bringing data to life in your sheets, in your meetings? Like, data's dead. Like, what do you do with it? I don't know. I just thought weather, The Weather Company and e.l.f.
**Jake:** example is great because it-
**Greg Licciardi:** who gets there first, who uses that data first is gonna have a
**Jake:** Mm-hmm. That's true
**Greg Licciardi:** the more you play into it that relates to the why, the more you find out about the why and can play into it. Why does this Aqua Glow primer help women look beautiful in all kinds of weather? here it comes. It's this, this storm is coming, and Aqua Glow is the savior. And, um, it's, it's brilliant
**Jake:** Another [00:32:00] example is Chick-fil-A embedding, um, my pleasure. Like, that could just be a thing that they say. They have to do it at the level where they relate to people. And so that's when you, you can take an insight, but you gotta bring it live to people, and I, I love that. So right... We, there's so many Indiana Jones things that I let go, but I have some Indiana Jo- jokes coming up.
**Jake:** Um, but w- we're gonna respect people's time. If they had to take one message away from the book, what would you want it to be?
**Greg Licciardi:** Uh, it's, it's a holistic approach. Again, you have to be hitting on all things, but you-- it takes courage. Have the courage to go out and learn about the consumer you're targeting and to deliver a campaign that's truly unique, you know, truly unique to your brand purpose [00:33:00] and how you deliver on the why. settle for generic output that because it was simple and easy and saved you time. Really look at marketing in a holistic way. Make sure you take this framework as a true North Star to guide you in a period of time where we're having more things thrown at us, more pressures to perform um, really, you know, slow down a little because marketing's an incredibly incredible field.
**Greg Licciardi:** It's a, it's a great field and some of the smartest, most creative people are in this field because of their ability to be creative and to really take the data and make it into marketing that stands out, that delivers on that why, and fulfills that white space in the marketplace. So that would be my message
**Jake:** I love that. It's a rallying [00:34:00] cry, man. Um, so people wanna, people wanna find the book. I'm gonna put the links in here, but if they wanna connect with you and learn more about you online, how can they do that?
**Greg Licciardi:** Well, I'm on LinkedIn, Greg Licciardi, just look me up. But it's holygrailofmarketing.com. I was lucky to get the URL. Uh, halfway through the book it didn't exist, and it came up, and I got it. And, um, so I'm so happy that it's such a simple place to, for people to find information. There's... Our podcast will be posted there.
**Greg Licciardi:** I have others. I have a podcast with Paulina Brown on there.
**Jake:** Nice
**Greg Licciardi:** so it's a, it's a great site, and the book, I enjoy the book, and really, I hope it inspires everyone and helps them to do a better job in their, their marketing roles. And if it's a startup, helps them be successful or a brand that's been around, that it can grow and reach new heights and achieve that holy grail
**Jake:** Oh, no, that's a great ending. Okay, I'm not gonna let you go until we play a game called Cheese or Chocolate, where I ask you one... [00:35:00] I give you two options and you gotta choose one.
**Greg Licciardi:** Okay.
**Jake:** Are you ready?
**Greg Licciardi:** Yes
**Jake:** Cheese or chocolate?
**Greg Licciardi:** Chocolate
**Jake:** Okay. Yeah, that sounds about, it's 2:00, 2:00, 3:00 o'clock. Okay. Um, Temple, Temple of Doom or Raiders of the Lost Ark?
**Greg Licciardi:** Raiders of the Lost Ark
**Jake:** Oh, you're that guy. Huh. Not that there was a right answer. B- be nice to Greg. I, I didn't say Last Crusade because it's, these are different things, and I didn't say Dial of Destiny or any of that other crap. Okay, anyway.
**Greg Licciardi:** I'm old school that
**Jake:** You gotta be so classic. The music alone. Oh, God. Okay.
**Greg Licciardi:** yeah
**Jake:** Okay. I go first, Indy, or Indy go ahead?
**Greg Licciardi:** Indy, go ahead
**Jake:** I'm sorry. Why don't you... You're the archeologist. Go see if there's something in there. I shouldn't go. I'm just a marketer. Okay. Um, [00:36:00] would you rather have a map or a menu?
**Greg Licciardi:** Menu
**Jake:** Hmm. Just tell me if there's a Count of Monte- Is there a Monte Cristo sandwich on this thing? Okay. Is there some Wendy's up in this?
**Greg Licciardi:** There you go.
**Jake:** Okay. All right, two more. Rehearsal room or writer's room?
**Greg Licciardi:** Rehearsal room sounds like it'd be more lively and
**Jake:** Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we're getting closer to showtime there.
**Greg Licciardi:** noise in
**Jake:** There you go. And, and boo if necessary. Okay. Um, finally, hammock or rocking chair?
**Greg Licciardi:** Hammock.
**Jake:** You wanna get into that?
**Greg Licciardi:** last summer. Oh my God, I have the best naps in that hammock.
**Jake:** you don't. How do you get in? Uh, is it safe? Do you just jump in?
**Greg Licciardi:** and right in it.
**Jake:** No, you just fall in. I'm jealous.
**Greg Licciardi:** Love hammocks
**Jake:** Love hammock. Oh gosh, the holy [00:37:00] grail of hammocks
**Greg Licciardi:** mean, I love hammocks, but yeah. But
**Jake:** Okay. All right, count it. All right, I'm gonna end it. We're gonna end it on a laugh about hammocks
